Waves Raises $2 Million on First Day of ICO

Waves, a cryptocurrency project started by some of the former NXT and cryptocurrency developers, has raised almost $2 million on the first day of its Initial Coin Offering (ICO). The total first-day raise was 4683 BTC. The coin offering goes on for another 49 days until the end of May 2016. Users are required to create an account on the Waves ICO site to participate in the coin offering. The Waves team consists of Sasha Ivanov and Tobias Schwarz. The developers are aiming to make the tokens liquid and tradeable right after the ICO ends on May 31st. The ICO is structured in a way that provides a 20% bonus for participants on the first day, which might explain the high first-day raise.

The ICO uses a unique address for each participant, and therefore the total amount raised was not independently verified by Smith + Crown on the blockchain, due to limitations in knowing the full list of addresses.

ICO Characteristics

The Waves team claimed to using a 2-of-3 multisig wallet for the funds, with two of the keys held by Alexander Kuzmin, mycelium.com founder and Paul Klanschek, coinimal.com founder. However, the ICO doesn’t seem to use Bitcoin addresses that are multisig and instead using traditional single signer address. It is unclear if the funds will ultimately be transferred to a multisig wallet.

There will be a fixed 100 million Waves tokens that will be created. 85 million of them will be sold in the ICO. The rest of the 15 million is divided up among the development team, early supporters and bounties. There is no cap on the amount raised during the ICO, and the final price of each token will depend on how much was raised.

Product and Launch

The team expects to launch a testnet along with a lightweight client before the ICO ends. The final product launch is expected in Fall of 2016. The major selling point for Waves is the creation of a token issuance system, that future ICOs can use. The team also claims to provide fiat-backed crypto-tokens backed by third-parties. The current choice for ICOs include such projects like Counterparty, Omni, NXT and Bitshares.